The Heretic Queen

by Michelle Moran

  The sun was still high when Ramesses called to me, his voice filled with triumph. I flung open the cabin door, and he spun me in his arms.

  “More than a hundred Sherden are our prisoners,” he declared. “There will be no more pirates haunting the quays of Tamiat. No more Sherden pillaging from Egypt or Crete or Mycenae. Come!”

  He led me from the cabin onto the prow, and I became aware of the blood on his kilt as the soldiers cheered, holding up their swords in honor of our victory. “To Ramesses the Great and his Warrior Queen,” one man shouted and hundreds joined in the chant. The words echoed over the waters and from the encircling warships, where the Sherden were being bound in chains. Ramesses led me to the quay, where chests filled with precious metals and ivory gleamed in the sun. In a happy reversal, our soldiers were unloading the Sherden ships, it appeared that the stolen treasures were endless: turquoise amulets and silver bowls from ships that had once been bound for Crete. There was red leather armor and alabaster jars engraved with strange scenes of a horse from a battle at Troy. Next emerged a golden litter adorned with carnelian and blue glass beads.

  Ramesses put his arm around my waist. “The soldiers are all talking about you. It was incredibly brave . . .”

  I waved away his compliment. “What? To walk the deck of a ship?”

  “So many captives!” Asha interrupted. “We’ve had to place them on two separate ships. What do you want to do with them?” he asked. “They’re shouting for something, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

  I separated myself from Ramesses. “What language do they speak?”

  “Something I’ve never heard,” Asha admitted. “But one man was speaking Hittite.”

  “They probably all speak some Hittite,” I guessed. “They may have learned it in Troy, along with Greek. What do you want me to tell them?”

  “That they are prisoners of Egypt,” Ramesses said, then repeated what I had told him. “And that Egypt will never tolerate thieves.”

  I smiled.

  “And will you show yourself to them?” Asha asked.

  It was a risk. Ramesses wouldn’t want the Sherden to think they were so important that the Pharaoh of Egypt himself had come to dispose of them. But if Ramesses appeared in his nemes crown with his crook and flail, they would be reminded of whom they had dared to anger, and that none could cross Pharaoh and remain unpunished.

  Ramesses looked around the quay with its piles of looted treasure, and I saw his cheeks redden. “Yes, I will come.”

  A soldier ran to fetch Ramesses’s crown, and Asha, forever cautious, said to me, “These men are pirates. Be careful. They are vicious, and if one of them should break loose—”

  “Then I will have you and Ramesses there to protect me.”

  We boarded the first ship where the captives were being held, and almost at once I was overwhelmed by the stench. Blood and urine soaked the decks, and I put the sleeve of my cloak to my nose. I prepared myself for the sight of men in chains, bleeding and angry. But the wounded had been taken to a separate ship, and the fifty men who sat blinking into the sun were unbowed. They didn’t wear beards on their chins like the Hittites, and their long yellow hair was a sight to behold. I paused to stare at them, and when they recognized Ramesses’s crown, they shook their chains and shouted. I commanded in Hittite, “Calm yourselves!”

  Many of the men passed looks between one another. Some leered so that I would know what they were thinking, but I refused to be unsettled. “I am Princess Nefertari,” I addressed them, “daughter of Queen Mutnodjmet and wife of Pharaoh Ramesses. You have looted Pharaoh’s ships, taken Pharaoh’s goods, and murdered Pharaoh’s soldiers. You will now repay your debt to Pharaoh by serving in his army.” The men raised their voices, and next to me, Ramesses and Asha tensed. I saw Ramesses reach for the hilt of his sword, and I shouted over the outburst, “You may serve in Pharaoh’s army where you will be given training, outfitted with clothes, perhaps earn a command as an officer. Or you may rebel, and be sent to a certain grave toiling in Pharaoh’s quarries.”

  There was a sudden silence, as the men realized that they were not to be put to death but trained and fed.

  Ramesses looked at me. “You know that their leaders will have to be executed.”

  I nodded solemnly. “But the rest of them—”

  “May serve a better purpose.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  PI-RAMESSES

  Avaris

  NEWS OF THE Sherden conquest traveled quickly up the River Nile. As we sailed toward the city of Avaris, people along the shore chanted triumphantly, “PHARAOH! PHARAOH!” Then the soldiers in the fleet took up the cry of, “WARRIOR QUEEN,” which the people on the shore returned without knowing why. And yet, I felt unease—for I wondered what Henuttawy would do when she heard that chant repeated.

  Three days after the Sherden were defeated, we stood on the deck of Amun’s Blessing as the ship sailed into port. Because war and rebellion had stolen recent summers, the court in Thebes had not made its progress to Avaris since Ramesses had been crowned, and I was shocked by how much the city had changed. In the years I had been away, it was as if someone had taken a painting and left it out in the sun, allowing it to fade, then crack, and finally peel. I turned to Asha.

  “What happened?” he gasped.

  We both looked at Ramesses, and although he should have been basking in the adoration of the people who crowded the shore shouting his name, his face was stricken. “Look at the quay! Half of it’s falling to pieces!” Entire boards were rotten, and there appeared to be no system for washing away the grime, which clung to the women’s robes and feet. Merchants had dropped fish heads to rot where they lay, not bothering to kick them back into the river. “And the litters!” He pointed to the faded canopies resting atop chipped carrying poles.

  “It’s like Pharaoh Seti hasn’t stepped outside of his palace in years,” Asha murmured.

  “But he came to Thebes for the Feast of Wag. He must know about this! He had to have seen . . .”

  We disembarked with twenty soldiers who would accompany us to the palace of Pi-Ramesses, and the clapping mobs were too happy to notice Ramesses’s distress. They ran before the litter he was sharing with me, throwing lotus petals into the air and passing the soldiers tall cups of barley beer. And even though he waved, I knew what Ramesses was thinking. Large holes in the main road had gone ignored, when all they would have required was dirt and stone to fill them in. The streets were littered with half-eaten pomegranates, sewage, and discarded papyrus. There was the unmistakable look of abandonment in Avaris, as if the city had been left to rule itself and no one much cared what happened to it.

  When we reached the palace, heavily armed guards opened the gates. As Ramesses descended from the litter, he shook his head fearfully. “Something has happened. Something terrible has happened in there.”

  The gardens had been allowed to grow untended, and on a carpet of weeds the towering statues of Amun stood cracked and dirtied. Every house in Egypt kept a courtyard of tile or dirt at its front where no snakes would be able to hide, but weeds and grass had been allowed to grow right up to the steps of Pi-Ramesses. We reached the heavy wooden doors, and when Ramesses saw how worn they had become, he snapped angrily, “Is this my father’s palace or the ruins of Amarna?” Even the tiles underfoot were cracked and broken. He turned to me. “I don’t understand this—what could be more important than maintaining this palace? My grandfather built Pi-Ramesses. If it’s crumbling now, what will happen in a hundred years? What will be left for our family to be remembered by?”

  The doors swung open, and when there was no one in the hall to greet our arrival, the soldiers escorting us grew nervous. A figure emerged from the shadows, and as it grew closer I could hear a dozen swords being drawn from their sheaths. Then the light fell across Woserit’s face, and she was weeping.

  “Ramesses, your father has taken ill. He’s lying in his chamber, waiting for you.”
r />   The color drained from Ramesses’s cheeks. “When?” he cried. “When did this happen?”

  “After we arrived. Just yesterday.”

  Ramesses dismissed his soldiers with a wave of his hand, and Asha knew to settle them in the Great Hall with food and drink. I followed behind Ramesses and Woserit, and because I had never seen her cry, the sound frightened me. Her turquoise cloak trailed before me, and I tried to concentrate on its beaded hem rather than allow myself to feel the horror of what was happening. Seti was ill, but that didn’t explain why the city had been allowed to deteriorate; or why the palace, besides the few servants peering nervously between the columns, seemed to be an empty husk.

  When we entered Seti’s chamber, several guards parted their spears to allow us through. But the man in the bed was not the same man I had seen during the Feast of Wag. Not even the linens they had covered him with could conceal how slight he was, or how pale he had grown since I’d last seen him.

  “Father!” Ramesses cried.

  Queen Tuya, Iset, and Henuttawy already stood in a circle around him. Paser sat on a wooden stool nearby, and Woserit joined him. Pharaoh Seti opened his eyes, but he seemed to know his son more by his voice than by sight. “Ramesses,” he whispered, and coughed.

  “Iset will find you more juice,” Henuttawy said. “Is that what you’d like?”

  Seti nodded painfully, and she took Iset and quickly left the chamber.

  Ramesses knelt at his father’s bed. “What is it, abi?” He used the intimate word for father. I had never heard him use it before. There was heartbreak in his voice.

  Pharaoh Seti let out a heavy sigh, and Queen Tuya began weeping. Her iwiw lay with his muzzle between his paws, looking almost as sick at heart as his mistress. He didn’t even raise his head to offer me his customary growl. “I have been sick for many months now, Ramesses. Anubis is following me.”

  “No, abi. Please, not yet!”

  Seti coughed again and bent his finger for Ramesses to come closer. “I want you to repair Pi-Ramesses for me. She has fallen into ruin.” Seti groaned, grasping the heavy linen covers in his hands. “For a hundred years, the Hittites have threatened to invade. They think to rule Egypt when I am gone. All of the treasury’s gold has gone to the stables. To my charioteers. Now the Hittites will become your problem . . .”

  “We have just tasted victory over the Sherden! We have brought them here as prisoners to train with your army—”

  Pharaoh Seti struggled to sit up. It was difficult for me to believe that this was the same man who had picked me up and sat me on his knee when I was a child. Eyes, voice, flesh: everything about him appeared shrunken, as if he was turning into the mummified Osiris before us. “I am past care, Ramesses. The physicians say it is a condition of the heart. The heart is weak,” he wheezed.

  Ramesses opened his mouth to argue, but Seti raised his hand. “There’s not enough time. Bring me the maps.” His watery eyes fell on a low-lying table. “My projects.” Pharaoh Seti breathed heavily. “These are what you must finish for me.”

  That very morning, we had been celebrating our triumph. Now I realized we might be mourning Seti’s death before the day ended. It occurred to me that the gods held life on Ma’at’s silver scales. Great happiness must be balanced by great sorrow.

  “There is my tomb in the Valley,” Seti said. “The paintings are done. All that is left is to carry my sarcophagus into its chamber.” A violent sob escaped from Tuya, and I pressed my lips together so that I wouldn’t sob as well. But Pharaoh Seti carried on. “And this palace.” His breathing became labored. “Be certain to restore this palace, Ramesses. Make it your capital so that you can be closer to Hatti. If you can defend the city of Avaris, Egypt will never fall.”

  “Egypt will never be conquered while I am Pharaoh—”

  “Then you must not let the Hittites take back Kadesh. Without her, our lands are vulnerable.” Pharaoh Seti sighed. “And Nefer.”

  Ramesses glanced at me. “Do you want to speak with her?”

  “No!”

  He was vehement, and I pressed my back to the door.

  “Let her remember me as I was. Nefer—” His voice began to fail. “Nefertari is the mother of your eldest sons. A clever princess . . . but the people still don’t want her.”

  “Who told you this?” Ramesses demanded. Woserit looked across the chamber at me, and we both knew at once: Henuttawy.

  “It doesn’t matter who told me this. I have heard. The people are what’s important, Ramesses. You know what happened to Nefertiti. The people killed her—”

  “The priests killed her,” Ramesses argued.

  “And the priests are the mouths of the people. Akhenaten—”Pharaoh Seti grasped the covers, and I imagined that I could hear his heart rattling in his shrunken chest. “Wait at least another year before you choose your Chief Wife.”

  “Abi,” Ramesses protested. “It’s already been a year.”

  “Do not risk what this family has built! Wait at least another year. Promise me.”

  I held my breath and waited for Ramesses to make the promise. But Ramesses didn’t speak.

  “Promise!” Pharaoh Seti exclaimed, and Ramesses whispered, “I promise.”

  I closed my eyes and slipped quietly out the door, shutting it behind me. The pain in my chest felt as if it burned with flame, and I ran to the Audience Chamber to be alone. The door was slightly ajar. As I stepped inside I almost cried out, but for the sound of voices from behind a pillar. I crept along the wall toward the front of the chamber, listening.

  “I have bought you a year, and you will wipe that ugly scowl from your face and look me in the eye,” whispered Henuttawy.

  “The gods will see what you’ve done—” Iset swore.

  “What we’ve done.” Henuttawy’s voice was calm. “Every servant in Avaris saw you with that cup last night.”

  “Because you gave it to me!”

  “And who was there to see that? And anyway, all we did was speed his interminable passing. The longer we wait, the stronger Nefertari will grow. No one may ever question this,” she said, “but if I should remind them—” Henuttawy glanced over her shoulder at the empty chamber before continuing in a harsh whisper. “You shall find a way to repay me, or as I am bound to Isis, I will take back everything I have ever given you! If he makes that girl queen, she’ll have him banish us to Mi-Wer, and don’t think I won’t sacrifice you to save—”

  There was noise outside the Audience Chamber, and their conversation fell silent. I escaped through the door and steadied myself with several deep breaths in case they should see me. Woserit appeared in the hall with Paser, followed by Ramesses and Queen Tuya.

  Ramesses looked as pale as alabaster. “He’s gone, Nefer.” He shook his head and was not ashamed to weep. “Gone to Osiris.”

  I took him in my arms as Henuttawy and Iset appeared with cups of shedeh.

  Seeing our tears, Henuttawy cried out, and Iset placed her hand across her mouth.

  I buried my face in Ramesses’s chest so that no one could see how sick the sight of them made me. Ramesses removed himself from my embrace. “Letters will have to be drafted . . .”

  “With Your Highness’s permission, I will take care of the letters,” Paser said.

  Your Highness.

  The words struck Ramesses a visible blow. There would only be one Pharaoh of Egypt now.

  “And what would you like me to do?” Henuttawy asked.

  I wanted to shout that murdering the King of Egypt was sufficient, but the words stuck in my mouth and the burning in my chest increased.

  “Go with Iset and Woserit,” Ramesses said. “They will take my mother to the Temple of Amun where she will let the gods know . . .” He hesitated, since the truth was too terrible to speak. “She will let the gods know that my father is coming.”

  When everyone turned to leave, I motioned for Paser, and he saw me hovering near the door to the Audience Chamber.

  “Nefert
ari, what are you doing?” he demanded.

  “He should never have died!” I whispered fiercely.

  Paser looked behind him, but the hall had cleared.

  “When I left the chamber I heard Henuttawy speaking with Iset. They were talking about a cup,” I said frantically. “Henuttawy told Iset that she had bought another year. Another year,” I repeated.

  “We all saw Iset pass Pharaoh a cup last night . . .” Paser replied.

  “But it was Henuttawy who gave it to her! And now she has a secret she can use to ruin Iset if Iset won’t give her whatever she wants. And what she wants is to banish Woserit to the farthest temple in the Fayyum, then rebuild the Temple of Isis so that she’ll control the largest treasury in Egypt.”

  “This only comes to pass if Iset becomes queen—”

  “And now she has another year to try! You heard Ramesses’s promise, and even if he doesn’t honor it . . . if Henuttawy could kill her own brother . . .”

  For the first time, I saw fear in Paser’s eyes. “The physicians said it was Pharaoh’s heart. No one suspected poison.” He looked at me. “Who else has heard this?”

  “No one,” I promised.

  “Then keep your own counsel. I will tell Woserit—”

  “And Ramesses? Pharaoh Seti was his father!”

  But Paser shook his head. “And there is no proof of what you’ve heard.”

  “A physician can determine if it was poison.”

  “Or he might determine that it was his heart, and you will have wrongly accused the High Priestess of Isis. Keep your silence. Ramesses may believe you; he may even summon a physician, but how will we know he’s not in the pay of Henuttawy? There are politics in everything, Nefertari.”

  “So Seti’s death will go unpunished?” I clenched my fists to keep the rage from shaking my whole body.

  “No evil deed ever goes unpunished.” He raised his eyes to a mural of the goddess Ma’at, who was weighing a heart against the feather of truth. Because the heart had been honest in life, it was equal in weight to the feather, and in the painting, the man was smiling. His ka would not be devoured by the crocodile god. His soul would go on to live for eternity.